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  “Okay, maybe not tied up.” Just because Stuart was an ex-Ranger who knew how to shoot a gun didn’t mean he was a murderer. What she really hoped was that none of the Wellon boys had killed Ted. She’d rather it was just some random criminal who’d happened to shoot him.

  But she didn’t think that was the way things were going to lay out. And she didn’t think she was ever going to get the dang-blasted seat belt figured out.

  “Kat, you don’t have to do this,” he said, reaching over and patiently buckling her up.

  “Yes. I do,” she said, when he was finished and she’d let out the breath she’d accidentally held. She wasn’t going to walk away from this mess and leave him to handle it. She wasn’t going to walk away from him, no matter how many perverts crawled out of the woodwork.

  This time, she was seeing it through to the end. Maybe it was penance, or maybe it was just the right thing to do.

  “Okay, then,” he agreed, but she heard the reluctance in his voice. “Where do we go next?”

  “Greg Ashe and Philip Cunningham.” She didn’t have to look at the list lying on the dash. “They’re partners in a big development company down in Colorado Springs. Greg said they’d seen the news about Ted this morning in the paper, and they were both shocked. I got the feeling that hearing from me made him pretty nervous.”

  “Nervous works for me,” he said, turning the key in Roxanne’s ignition. The car did what it always did, came to life instantly with enough power and sound to qualify as a natural disaster or an act of God.

  He gunned the motor, and she grabbed for the side of her seat and the console—as ready as she was going to get.

  FROM across the street, Birdy took a long drag off his cigarette, then knocked the ash out the window of his low-slung Corvette. A tight smile curved his mouth.

  He’d had no idea this was going to be so much fun, watching the two of them scramble around like squirrels looking for nuts.

  Well, they’d found a nut all right. Bobby Hughes was so far over the edge, his last reality check had bounced. Still, he’d had enough brain cells left to call Stuart in a panic this morning to tell him Katya Dekker was coming to the Pony. Stuart had told Bobby to keep his mouth shut—but Birdy figured that thought hadn’t stuck much beyond the phone call itself, if it had even stuck that long. Listening had never been one of Bobby’s strong points. With Bobby, it was all about him, all the time.

  But Bobby hadn’t mentioned Christian Hawkins showing up. That part had surprised Birdy when the two of them had driven up about half an hour ago, and Birdy didn’t like surprises that weren’t of his own making. He’d made sure Hawkins would be at the Botanic Gardens last night, but he’d never dreamed he and Katya would hook up again.

  What was she thinking? Didn’t she realize Hawkins was probably the one who had murdered Ted Garraty last night? Everything had been set up to look that way, just like things had been set up thirteen years ago for it to look like Hawkins had murdered Jonathan.

  The girl simply had no sense. She never had. It frustrated the hell out of Birdy. And what she’d been doing in those photographs—well, that just infuriated him. She’d made so many bad choices in her life, starting with choosing Jonathan over him, and then choosing Hawkins over Jonathan. Neither one of them had been good enough for her.

  And now she was with Hawkins again—but not for long.

  The last time he’d set Christian Hawkins up for a murder rap, it had been a real slapped-together job. Passions and adrenaline had been running high. People had been scared. There’d been blood everywhere, and he’d had to think fast on his feet. He’d been amazed when Hawkins was actually convicted, then irritated beyond measure two years later when it became apparent that he was going to be pardoned.

  Talk about having to think fast on his feet. He’d had to scramble like hell to find that old deathbed skid-row bum, Manny the Mooch, and convince him to confess. It was amazing, really, how little money it took to buy a man’s reputation and his life—not that Manny had ever had much of either.

  This time, though, Birdy had been able to plan things out. There wouldn’t be another pardon for Christian Hawkins. Hawkins’s success with the Department of Defense just made it that much more satisfying, that much more of a challenge to bring him down.

  The brute-powered muscle car Hawkins was driving pulled onto East Colfax, and Birdy went ahead and started the Corvette. He would have loved to follow them in their quest for justice, but he had a little blackmail to conduct, and his pigeon was due at the mansion in less than a half hour.

  He doubted if there was another person on the face of the earth who’d managed to blackmail someone else for a murder he’d committed himself—let alone two—and he’d been doing it for thirteen years.

  Sometimes he wondered why he worked so hard at his day job, when he’d shown a preternaturally young flair for serious extortion. More than a flair, actually. A true brilliance.

  He did need Katya, though, for something. He wasn’t quite sure what yet. Seeing her again had really driven the point home. He’d always planned on her being part of his little reunion party. He’d wanted to shake her up a bit. Now he was thinking he wanted to do more than shake her up.

  He flicked his cigarette out onto the street and started putting the Corvette through its gears.

  Choosing Christian Hawkins again might possibly be her last mistake.

  CHAPTER

  15

  THE CORPORATE OFFICES of Cunningham Ashe Construction were nothing short of luxurious. According to Katya, old man Cunningham had built half of Denver before moving the company to Colorado Springs and joining forces with Greg Ashe’s father. The trust funds ran rich and deep on both sides of the boardroom.

  From where he sat in Greg Ashe’s outer office, waiting for the man’s secretary to track him down, Hawkins could feel every dollar of all that old money. The carpet was thick, the paneling cherry, and there were dozens of elaborately framed photographs on the walls. Like Tim McGowan, Greg Ashe had a passel of kids.

  But it wasn’t the photographs that were holding Hawkins’s interest.

  Kat was wandering around the office, all strappy red sandals and little red dress, and he was riveted to every step.

  He’d borrowed J.T.’s car one night that summer, a GTO named Corinna, and taken Kat to the races. And what a helluva thing that was to be remembering. They’d made love in the backseat, hot, steam-up-the-windows love in the middle of the night on the drag strip at Bandimere Speedway. He’d clocked a quarter mile in sixteen seconds, and his prize had been undressing her in the backseat.

  He’d taken his time.

  Geezus.

  She’d been so shy, and getting her out of her underwear had taken some coaxing, but all he’d wanted to do was look at her for a long, long time—and have his pants unzipped while he did it.

  “Here’s one for marksmanship,” she said, looking up at a framed certificate hanging on the wall. “That doesn’t look so good, does it.”

  She was talking to herself as much as him, so he didn’t feel overly pressured to reply, especially since he was kind of busy.

  It had taken a while, but she’d finally relaxed and let him look, so pretty, and so woman to everything he’d wanted as a man. She’d let him touch her, tease her until he could hardly breathe, her own gaze heavy-lidded and half-glazed, watching him stroke himself—and just as he’d been ready to cover her, push up inside her, she’d surprised the hell out of him and gone down on him in Corinna’s backseat, taken him in her soft, wet mouth and blown his ever-lovin’ mind.

  Her first time, and she’d gotten him so hot.

  She moved along to the next framed piece. “And here’s another one, marksmanship again, that makes him the best in Colorado Springs for two years in a row.”

  He was so friggin’ screwed.

  With a monumental effort worthy of the Man of Steel, he shut down the old memory machine and tried to concentrate on what she was saying: marksmanship, champio
n, two years. Okay, he wasn’t too worried. The shooter at the Gardens had been a professional, a guy who shot off hundreds of rounds of ammunition a day, every day—not a guy who won the annual skeet shoot at his country club once a year.

  She stopped next to a small table and opened her purse, giving him a perfect profile view of pure, unadulterated heartbreak.

  How could she not know he was thinking about sex? he wondered. It was all he’d been thinking about for the last eighteen hours, give or take a few minutes spent thinking about keeping them both alive. Oh, yeah, and twice he’d thought about food, once about her mother, and once he’d checked to make sure he had an extra mag for his Glock.

  He was trying his damnedest not to think about Kid and J.T.

  She stood there, going through her purse and talking about Ashe and Cunningham, filling him in while she searched for something, probably her bubblegum lipstick, and she was completely clueless that in his mind he already had her half undressed and was getting ready to go down for the count.

  She turned and met his gaze, a fleeting smile on her face and sure enough, a shiny gold tube of lipstick in her hand. She was still talking about the guys they were going to meet, and he let her. Without moving a muscle from where he was sprawled in the chair, he let her ramble on.

  He’d met women who knew the instant a guy’s attention turned to sex. He’d met them and bedded them. Katya Dekker was not one of those women.

  She finally ran out of conversation, and in the ensuing silence, the subtlest change came over her face.

  Okay. That’s all he’d wanted. He pushed himself out of the chair and headed for the door to go get some air. He’d just wanted her to know he was thinking about sex, about the two of them doing it, not all those times they’d done it before, but about doing it now, him asking, her giving, and the two of them getting hot and heavy up against the little wooden table she was standing next to at the side of the door. That’s what he’d been thinking about—and now she was thinking about it, too.

  AFTER way too many hours following the guy from one construction site to the next, Greg Ashe was off Hawkins’s list of suspects, way off. He was a decent guy, a true-blue family man whose wife brought him his lunch. Hawkins knew a liar when he met one, and Greg Ashe was no liar.

  The verdict was still out on Philip Cunningham. He’d skipped out on their meeting. Ashe made profuse apologies, but Hawkins could tell he was confused about his partner’s unexplained absence. Cunningham had been told Katya was coming. Ashe said his partner had been looking forward to seeing her—which was probably as close to a lie as he’d gotten all day. But the guy was a no-show, and all Cunningham’s secretary could tell them was that he’d received a phone call shortly before lunch and left.

  Hawkins and Katya had tried his house, a mansion set in the foothills above Colorado Springs, but he wasn’t there, either.

  Night had fallen on their way back to Denver, and the lights of the city were stretched out across the plains all the way to the horizon. Skeeter had called a couple of hours back to tell him Dylan and Kid had made it home. Dylan was doing a quick turnaround to Washington, D.C., and Kid—hell—Kid was going over to his father’s house.

  God, what a night.

  Angling for a break in the traffic, he slid Roxanne onto an exit ramp for downtown and started gunning down the motor. Kat had fallen asleep about halfway home. She was sitting turned in her seat, facing him, her face pale in the moonlight and the faint glow of the dash lights.

  He’d promised her he would drive by Toussi’s and give her a chance to see how the show was going—but only from within the safe confines of the Challenger. She’d talked to Suzi Toussi half a dozen times today, but Alex was still persona non grata, and despite his pleading, Katya had not spoken to him.

  Three Prom King boys down, three to go—and so far Hawkins had struck out. Shortly after they’d left The Painted Pony, he’d put Skeeter on tracking Stuart Davis down. Cunningham was going to get a call first thing tomorrow, and by a stroke of luck, Albert Thorpe was flying in from Maryland in the morning and had said he’d be happy to meet with her.

  They’d done all they could for the day, unless Skeeter found Stuart Davis. In that case, Hawkins would be making a midnight run on his own, after he got Katya safely ensconced at Steele Street. He figured with Stuart being one of the last people to see Ted, he didn’t need an invitation to visit. Given the circumstances, he’d called Lieutenant Bradley right after he’d called Skeeter, and he knew she wouldn’t hesitate to knock on Stuart’s door in the middle of the night, either, if the police had found him.

  A few minutes later, he pulled up across the street from Toussi’s.

  “Kat?” He reached over and gently cupped her cheek, his thumb smoothing across her skin. “Kat, we’re here.”

  What he really wanted to do was one of those Snow White numbers and kiss her awake, but though she was the quintessential damsel in distress, he sure was no prince.

  She stirred, and he removed his hand.

  He watched her lashes slowly rise to reveal slumberous, sea green eyes—and he felt something, very near to where his heart might be, turn over.

  “We’re here, Kat. Toussi’s.” He gestured out the window. “Looks like it’s going pretty good.”

  There were cars parked up and down the street, and what looked like dozens, if not a hundred people inside the gallery, everyone schmoozing. A low murmur of the noise inside the place drifted out onto the sidewalk, and other people were arriving even as they watched.

  Yawning, she rolled to her other side in the seat to look out the passenger door window.

  Kat Dekker. Hell. He’d spent the whole day with her, and he could still hardly believe it.

  More curves than a cyclone—his gaze went over her, from where she had her feet tucked under her to the tip of her perky little nose—and yes, it was perky, damn perky, but she wasn’t. Never had been, not even at eighteen.

  For all the little-blond-bombshell packaging, she was and always had been sultry. He’d had pretty girls before her, the prettiest in west Denver, and he’d had some very elegant, sophisticated, and downright gorgeous women since. Somewhere in there, she should have been wiped off his memory banks.

  But she hadn’t been, not even close.

  He let his gaze slide down her arm to a point just above her elbow, almost on the underside of her arm. If a person didn’t know where to look, they would never notice the scar. It had faded with the years.

  He had to keep himself from reaching over and touching it, from wrapping his hand around her arm.

  “I should be in there,” Kat said. “Nikki’s an amazing talent, and there are certain people I want to make sure she meets.”

  “Suzi can handle it,” he assured her. “She’s a pro.”

  She went perfectly still on her side of the car. Then her head swiveled around, and she pinned him with her gaze.

  “You know Suzi?”

  Amazing. He knew that tone of voice, had heard it a few times from a few women, and all he could do was hold her gaze and fight a grin, and wonder if this just wasn’t a hell of a thing.

  “I’ve—uh—bought a few pieces from her over the years.”

  “You dated Suzi Toussi?”

  Now, how the hell, he wondered, had she gotten that out of what he’d just said?

  It was true, but how had she known?

  “A few times,” he admitted. What did he have to hide?

  A question that Kat didn’t seem to care about, because she was shutting down on him, big-time. First with the crossing of the legs, then the crossing of the arms, then her mouth settling into a hard, hard line, and then the fixing of her gaze out the windshield.

  Absolutely amazing.

  What could he say? That he never would have made love to another woman in his whole life if he could have had her?

  Actually, he could have said that, because he was sure it was true. No one had ever felt like her. He would have been true to her.
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  But none of that seemed particularly relevant to their current situation. Christ, he’d gone to prison because of her, and the fact was when he’d gotten out he’d laid half the women in Denver before he’d kind of come to his senses and figured out that setting some sort of record wasn’t going to change a thing.

  “Is she the one you’re taking to the opera?”

  Unfuckingbelievable. He didn’t know whether to laugh or get really pissed off.

  “You told me last night she was in love with a guy named Julio.”

  The little shrug she gave him spoke volumes. “I think they broke up, and knowing Suzi, she’s probably looking for a new boyfriend . . . or an old one.”

  And Katya thought that he might be interested?

  “Gee-zus,” he swore, sliding down in his seat. She’d always had the most amazing way of turning him inside out, and he’d be damned if she hadn’t just done it again. She couldn’t possibly be jealous—unless she remembered more of last night than she’d let on.

  “I think we need a reality check here. How about we go get a cup of coffee or something? Maybe some dinner.”

  A major reality check. Cripes. And he was starving. He straightened back up in his seat and reached for the ignition. Jealous. That didn’t make any sense at all, no matter that he’d been feeling the same way. He knew he was nuts when it came to her, a file folder with way too many unopened documents, but he’d thought she’d have more sense sober.

  “How about Chinese food?” he asked. “And a cup of coffee?”

  She didn’t answer, so he decided for the both of them, and an hour later they pulled up in the alley called Steele Street with takeout from Chang’s Imperial Palace and a couple of coffees from Jack’s Joe—if what she’d ordered even qualified as coffee. He doubted it. A double-chocolate, single-shot grande latte with triple whipped cream sounded more like a warm milkshake than a caffeine punch.

  But to each his own. He’d gotten a double-shot espresso, straight up, and basically wasted as much time as possible getting home. He didn’t know what the two of them were going to do all night. He figured his best bet was calling Skeeter up to the loft and the three of them playing Parcheesi or something. He knew he didn’t want to be alone with Katya. He didn’t trust himself not to get in over his head. He’d thought he could count on her to shoot him down if he got too many ideas, but that had been before the Suzi Toussi conversation.